Let the Blue States
Go!

November 23,
2004

As
everyone knows, the United States of America
are no longer quite so united as they used to be. They are now divided into
blue states and red
states. The
blue states tend to be
liberal and Democratic and the red states tend to be conservative and
Republican.

The blue states, concentrated on
the coasts, are upset that President Bush has been reelected  or, as
many blue-staters would say, elected. I cant blame them; but then,
the alternative scared me even more than Bush did.

Some blue-staters are even
talking about seceding from the Union. To me this is the most heartening
development in many years. I dont quite understand it, since the
blue-staters usually favor a huge centralized government; and Bush is
certainly giving us that. One new book by two British observers argues
that Bush has invented a new style of conservatism, which, instead of
opposing big government, makes the most of it. Maybe his
big-government conservatism is finally teaching liberals
the virtues of small government.

Anyhow, Im delighted to
see them learning. I never expected them to rediscover Jefferson Davis,
but perhaps the age of miracles isnt past after all. Soon we may be
hearing the rebel yell in staid Boston.

Its generally a healthy
thing when people rethink their basic political assumptions, and it usually
takes a shock to make them do so. A rethinking of mass democracy is long
overdue. Faith in sheer majority rule was assuredly alien to the Founders
of the Republic, which is why they called it a republic; for them,
democracy meant mob rule, and its one of the amusing turns of
American history that the allegedly conservative Republicans have become
the most ardent champions of the weird notion that wisdom resides in
numerical majorities.

The blue-staters have had the
kind of trauma that leads to conversion. The scales of centralism are
falling from their eyes. Sure, they want big government  but not
faith-based, anti-abortion, homophobic, war-mongering big government!
They were thinking of something more, well, Scandinavian.

Or Canadian. Some of the
neo-secessionist are toying with forming a new union with our friendly
neighbor to the north. This would permit a contiguous federation, a rather
crab-shaped polity extending down both coasts. Canada, unlike the United
States, recognizes the right of its provinces to secede, so if things
didnt work out, the blue states could opt out again. It is a bit queer
to think of San Diego and Baltimore as Canadian cities, but I suppose we
could get used to it.

Personally,
Id miss Boston and San Francisco, two of my favorite cities. On the
other hand, I respect their right to go their own way, and Id oppose
taking up arms to stop them.

Which of course raises the
obvious question: Would the U.S. Government ever permit it? The last time
the issue of withdrawing from the Union came up, the Federal
Governments response was Not nohow, not no way,
and it took rather extreme measures to prevent it. And today its arsenal is
immeasurably greater than it was then, including what we now call
weapons of mass destruction.

So the problem would have to be
handled with great delicacy. The blue states would have to achieve their
freedom by nonmilitary means. That would mean persuading the red states
to accept secession as a legitimate, righteous, and constitutional cause.

Is that possible? Yes, its
possible. By another fine historical twist, the reddest of the red states
today are the Southern states that seceded the last time. The South, which
has a long memory, might well be strongly sympathetic to the plea of the
blue states for a peaceful separation, especially considering its
differences with, and even antipathy to, the culturally alien Yankee states
of the Northeast in particular.

We forget that sympathy for
secession was so strong in the North that Abraham Lincoln had to crush
freedom of speech and press, with thousands of arrests, in order to
suppress it. If the North had been free, the South would have won its
freedom.

One nation,
indivisible? This has been our mantra for over a century.
Todays mantra, diversity, is in important respects
closer to the original spirit of the Republic  before it was welded
into an unwieldy and centralized monolith.

Mightier than armies is
an idea whose time has come. We are dealing with an idea whose
time has come back.

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